Bioinformatics Tools

Pages

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

miRex: A web based resource for miRNA expression profiles

Background: A few hundred miRNAs carry the potential to regulate thousands of target genes in eukaryotes. The expression profiles of miRNAs convey important information regarding tissue specific gene expression and can be used as a biomarker for disease progression and cancer classification among other rational interpretations pertaining to miRNA-gene interactions. There are several individual reports of miRNA expression profiling; however there is a lack of server that can render cross-comparison of all these datasets.


Description: We have developed miRex, a database and analysis tool for comparing miRNA expression profiles generated by high-throughput methods. Currently data from public repositories have been pre-normalized and provided with visual representation to aid comparison between experiments. miRNA ID converter: a tool for mapping miRNA IDs from one system of nomenclature to another has also been included.


Data: Currently, 614 experiments spanning 25 datasets deposited in Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO),the public repository for high-throughput gene expression data hosted by NCBI and 1132 experiments from 18 datasets from ArrayExpress, another resource for expression data, is available through miRex. Besides the microarray based data, there is a set of 40 experiments carried out by real time PCR.


URL: miRex is available at http://miracle.igib.res.in/mirex/